From: "Seeley, Mark (ELS-CMA)" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 15:42:22 +0000 When I look at scholarly publishing, I think the current system is digital, nuanced and highly networked. Looking at some recent posts I get the impression that critics of publishing paint a picture of adaptive failure-- that's far from the case. Researchers are able to follow links to references and now increasingly data. Editors identify potential peer reviewers through online systems. Publishing is faster than ever. Much of this infrastructure is based on revenue from publishing business models. Supply-side payments (Gold OA) are becoming increasingly important and are moving into a complementary phase to subscription revenue. Access to published content is incredibly high at most institutions in developed and fast-developing markets. With respect to low-income developing markets, publishers have many programs out there to support libraries through the Research4Life program [and others] as you all know. Subscription and transactional access (pay per view, rental models etc) models will continue to rely on exclusive rights/copyright, as it's difficult to sell something that someone else is giving away. This infrastructure absolutely depends on the work of researchers and academics themselves, serving as editors and reviewers (and of course in the first place as authors). On the journal side, scholarly publishers are well aware that article authors are looking for visibility and a good service, and to be successful, journals need to provide such services. Journals also need to find means to support authors who want to make their preprints available, work with institutional repositories and comply with funding agency requirements, means that wouldn't seriously undermine business models. If we can't find the right balance, then publishers won't be able to afford to maintain their investments in the infrastructure noted above, which in my opinion would be a net negative for research and scholarship. Universities have never stopped being publishers themselves, to my knowledge, and I think new efforts and steps have been taken along these lines-- you can think of the SPARC-PLOS alliance for example. Sci-Hub/LibGen is about both journal content and book content, and as many have pointed out obtains this content through security holes at university sites. There are lots of reasons why these activities are problematic for publishers, societies, authors and universities as has been pointed out in prior posts here and on Scholarly Kitchen. The point re changes in US copyright law in the 19th century is an incredibly good one-- but of course the way I see it is that as the young Republic began to be a net exporter of publications we started to think more about being more protective of "foreigners" works in the US-- entirely appropriately as I am sure Charles Dickens would agree. The US has an incredibly vital information and entertainment infrastructure, and probably leads the world in the production of copyright content, an important part of our balance of trade. Dismantling such a system seems like a recipe for adaptive failure-- we should instead look for a more thoughtful evolution. Mark Mark Seeley, Senior Vice President & General Counsel Elsevier 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA M: [log in to unmask] Internal Elsevier Legal department intranet site: http://nonsolus/legaldepartment/ External information at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/homepage.cws_home